House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Debate between Gareth Snell and Stephen Gethins

Consideration of Lords amendments
Thursday 4th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Snell]

Yes, she is very good. I thank my hon. Friend for that.

I want to start by addressing some of the points that the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) made—he has left. His characterisation of the House of Lords is grossly unfair. He characterised everybody who is a Member as being some sort of pocket-stuffing hanger-on. I think that exposes more about his particular brand of petty grievance politics than it does about the actual calibre of the individuals down at the end of the corridor. Regardless of party affiliation or whether they are independent or bishops, the Members I have come across—in Committee or Joint Committee work, or in delegations when I was previously in the House are—good people who want to see the nation benefit and our country thrive and see good politics and good governance. The characterisation is often unfair and the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire belittles his own position as a Member of this House.

[Stephen Gethins]

I intervene merely because my hon. Friend is not here to defend himself, so I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving way. There are a number of fine people in the House of Lords and I have worked with them in a number of ways. However, democratic accountability should be at the heart. Labour promised to scrap the House of Lords in the first ever manifesto it produced over a century ago, so although his hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead Central and Whickham (Mark Ferguson) might have been waiting 1,100 years, we have been waiting 110 years for Labour to fulfil its commitment to electing and giving them that democratic mandate.

[Gareth Snell]

Without getting drawn into the debate on the rights and wrongs, I will say that if the Scottish National party had wanted an elected second Chamber, it could have had one in the Scottish Parliament but chose not to. There are things about the way in which our democracy works that mean the SNP Members come down here simply to have a pop at this place for their grievance politics in Scotland. Frankly, if the SNP spent more time thinking about how it could help the nation rather than its petty nationalism, we might be in a better place as a country and things would be better in Scotland.

In a point relating to amendment 1, as my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Shaun Davies) rightly pointed out, Lord Grocott has proposed this Bill in the House of Lords numerous times over the past 20 years. He has tried to get to the point when there could have been an opportunity over the past two decades for Members who are here by virtue of the hereditary principle to be phased out over time. At every opportunity, it was blocked by the Conservative party; at every opportunity, it was talked out.

When the Bill was introduced in this place, first by David Hanson and then by John Spellar, the Conservative party opposed it, saying that the principle was wrong and there was not enough reform. I therefore feel that it is slightly disingenuous now to propose something that the Conservatives have opposed for the past two decades as their solution to the problem that they themselves created by not accepting it in the first place. It is slightly unfair, and it is a categorisation of their own politics that they seek to find ways to frustrate the Bill because they have no option for themselves.

On the somewhat spuriously suggestion that this is a way of neutering opposition in the other place, the number of Conservative peers, even after the expulsion of the hereditaries, will still make them the largest party in the House of Lords, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) pointed out. The Labour party is currently the third largest party in the House of Lords, after the Cross Benchers. Even after the removal of some of the Cross Benchers who sit by virtue of a hereditary peerage, they will still only be slightly behind the Labour party. The idea that this will remove any form of opposition in the upper House is simply incorrect—it does not hold water.

The other idea that good scrutiny of legislation in the House of Lords can somehow happen only by virtue of the application of the minds of the hereditary peers is equally incorrect. Some of the best challenges to Government in this Parliament have come from Members of the House of Lords who have been appointed. It does not necessarily mean they are less likely to be independent because they are not there by virtue of a hereditary peerage. I genuinely do not see that for myself. The times when I have sat and watched the House of Lords, because their sitting hours are later, I have seen that the challenges that come from the bishops, the Cross Benchers and the members of the Conservative and Liberal parties, regardless of how they reached there, have been thoughtful and well considered, and long may that continue. I do not think that is diminished by virtue of the fact that we say to a small group of those who have a right in the House of Lords, “Your route into this place was an irregularity, and we are seeking to sort that.”

The shadow Paymaster General, the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), disputed my figure. There have been 21 appointments to the House of Lords who have had the Conservative Whip. I appreciate that some of those have been resignation honours from previous Prime Ministers—and there were a few to get through because of the way their party operated—but there have been 21. At any point, the former Prime Ministers could have said, “We would like to consider giving those to members of the hereditary group who are not able to continue.” There have been a number of appointees who were not part of a resignation honours list, and again, the Conservative party did not take the opportunity to say to Earl Howe, “We are going to make sure that you can continue.”

Devolution (Immigration) (Scotland) Bill

Debate between Gareth Snell and Stephen Gethins

2nd reading
Friday 25th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Gethins]

I am glad to respond to that. I was deputy director of our Remain campaign, and I was delighted when not only did every part of Scotland vote overwhelmingly to remain in the EU, but every local authority area voted to remain in the EU—even those that had voted against joining the EU.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Could you give guidance on whether re-running the Brexit debate from 10 years ago is in any way linked to a single clause of this Bill from the Scottish National party?

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Gethins]

I am glad the hon. Member is proud of the opportunities he will be denying young people by going ahead with Labour’s plans. I found that debate yesterday slightly frustrating. My hon. Friends will have sat through similar debates in which Labour Member after Labour Member—in fairness, there are a number of them; they won the election, after all—talk about how dreadful Brexit was and the damage it did to our young people, universities, small and medium-sized enterprises, and security, and to Britain’s place in the world. But what are the Government doing about it? Nothing. They are embracing the hardest of hard Brexits. They could rejoin the customs union and reintroduce freedoms, to bring benefits to citizens the length and breadth of the UK.

[Gareth Snell]

I sat on the Opposition Benches, behind SNP Members, during those long, tumultuous days of the Brexit debate, and I remember watching SNP Member after SNP Member game the system to push us towards a no-deal Brexit, in the hope that the Government of the time would abandon the plan. There were Labour Members who argued consistently that we should adopt plans and deals; SNP Members voted against that at every opportunity because their narrow grievance politics was more important than a good deal for this country.

[Stephen Gethins]

The hon. Member is a born-again Brexiteer, and he has taken on the nonsense of Brexiteers. He should have a look at the European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act 2019, passed by this House, which banned a no-deal Brexit, which he said he was pushing on. Who was one of the co-authors of that Bill? I was. I worked with Labour colleagues, Liberal Democrat colleagues, Green colleagues and SDLP colleagues to stop the damaging “no deal” that Brexiteers embraced; he has embraced it, and Boris Johnson embraced it.

Let me move on to Scottish Labour; we have heard quite enough nonsense from the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) today. I was one of the authors of the Bill that we called the Benn-Burt Act because of the fine work done by those Members—

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Gethins]

I know the Isle of Sheppey. I know Kent very well: the kingdom of Kent is a fine county—the garden of England. I know some of the challenges that the hon. Gentleman rightly raises. He is representing his constituents very effectively in doing so and I am grateful to him not just for raising the issue, but the way in which he raises it. Kent is a fine place.

[Gareth Snell]

On that point, will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Stephen Gethins]

I am trying to answer the point raised by the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey. Kent is not Scotland and Scotland is not an island. We have some fine islands, as my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber (Brendan O’Hara) is keen to reminds us on a regular basis, but they are not the same. To compare the Isle of Sheppey with Scotland is a false comparison. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point and he is right to raise it—the value of these kinds of debates is that we can have such exchanges. The reason that I went through what has been said by all the think-tanks, the experts and the sectors—I could have gone on for longer, but I suspect you, Madam Deputy Speaker, would have hauled me up for that—is because there is such a body of evidence in Scotland around the issue. That is why the idea has had such a serious reading from every single party in Scotland.